Tristan was early. Not officiously so, but in a cute, eager kind of way that made her even more excited for their evening. Rory teased him slightly for his timing, but he just stood there, making himself comfortable by leaning in her door frame as she stepped into her shoes and switched purses.

"You don't have to hover in the door," she said, glancing back over at him time and again.

"You're inviting me in?" He sounded intrigued, if not a little surprised at the offer.

"I wasn't intending to, but I didn't realize you'd be early."

"Maybe I was hoping you wouldn't be dressed yet," he said with a suggestive raise of his eyebrows and a wide grin on his lips.

"Sorry to disappoint you. Though I wasn't sure what to dress for. You never said what we were doing. I hope this is okay," she said, offering a little twirl to give him a better view of her dark-wash jeans and her halter-neck top that flowed out over her waist and fell nearly to her hips. "Is it too much? Or too little? It's too something, I can tell by the look on your face," she said, suddenly frowning at him.

He crossed the threshold into her apartment then, closing the door and the space between them to assuage her insecurity. "Do the twirl again?"

She glared at him and pushed him away weakly as he caught her hand and pulled her into his body. Her shoulder was turned in to his chest and she lifted her chin up to maintain stern eye contact. "That was mean."

"No, that was tactical. And you sort of walked right into it."

She rested her hand on his chest and then took the chance to look him over. "You look nice."

He breathed her in and wrapped his hand around hers. "You look beautiful."

She leaned in just a little closer. "Where are we going?" she whispered.

"Out," he whispered back.

Her lips pouted in protest. "Okay, as a general rule, I don't enjoy vagueness. It's not cute, it causes me difficulty when trying to plan accordingly."

He kissed her cheek. "You are dressed appropriately. But we will be outside for a while, so bring a coat."

She bit her lip and gave him a narrow gaze. "Outside? Walking?"

"Is that a problem?"

She lifted up one foot as if to show it off. "I'm just rethinking my shoe choice."

He leaned down to better view her first choice of footwear, running a hand down her calf part-way. It sent a shock up her leg which continued up her spine. "Can you walk far in those?"

"To a point," she said. "I have boots that might be better, if we're going to be outside and walking a ways."

He sucked in some air through his teeth. "If you go to your closet, am I going to lose you to some kind of shoe paradox from which you'll never return?"

"Of course not," she protested. "I just need five, ten minutes, tops."

He shook his head, determined not to let her go alone. "I've heard that before. I'm coming with you," he said.

She looked at him in fresh alarm. "But my closet is in my bedroom."

"That's handy," he mocked.

She held up one hand like a stop sign. "You can't come in my bedroom."

"Why is that? Is it messy? I don't care if you don't make your bed."

"My bed is made. You just can't go near it."

"Are you banning me from your bedroom?"

"Tonight? Yes."

"My plan for the evening isn't to wind up in your bed."

She crossed her arms. "If we go into my bedroom together right now, you know what will happen."

He frowned at her like a confused child. "You'll change shoes while I watch?"

She blinked as she attempted to decide if he was being completely transparent with her. "That's it? That's all you can think for us to do together in my bedroom?"

He put a hand to her hip and squeezed her gently. "Of course I can think of plenty ... You said we can't… and believe it not, I am a gentleman. I'm not going to lure you to your bedroom and have my way with you, no matter how tempting it is. At least not until you give me the green light."

She focused on shuffling her feet. "I thought maybe you'd changed your mind. That the confines of our current agreement might have made you reconsider putting in any effort," she said.

"Rory, I'm early because all I wanted to do today was get over here to see you. I spent all week thinking about seeing you. I've spent all week thinking about what I needed to work through, what I need to do… to get back to the point that you won't ban me from your bed anymore," he said thoughtfully. "To that end, I have some things to tell you tonight."

"Talking is good," she said quietly. "And I don't want to ban you tonight or any other night. You know that. It's just, if we go in there together, you'll sit on my bed, and I'll pull out my boots and have to sit down to get them on, so I'll sit next to you, and then we'll be sitting on my bed together, and you'll look at me, like you're looking at me now, and we'll kiss, and then we'll be kissing on my bed," she rambled.

"You're right, we can't do that. It sounds just awful," he mocked in his most serious voice.

She smacked lightly at his upper arm. "You're not the only one that spent the whole week looking forward to tonight."

He sighed. "Go put your boots on. I will wait here. Whether you want to kiss me first is up to you."

"Kissing's allowed," she reminded him with encouragement.

"Thank God for small favors," he said as he slid his hand to the back of her head and kissed her, to both of their relief. They sank into each other, and their lips lingered with each brush. He pressed his forehead to hers instead of pulling away, affording them to look into each other's eyes ruefully as they enjoyed the moment.

"We always kiss before we go out," she noted.

"Is that a problem?" he asked, giving her another quick peck before straightening up away from her.

She smiled at him. She gave a slight shake of her head as she slipped her shoes off. "Just an observation."

"Can I tell you I'm not a fan of personal growth?" he called after her, though he remained rooted in place, per his word.

"It builds character," she called back from her closet.

"I have plenty of character," he answered, trying to employ a breathing method to ease his sexual tension. "Are you sitting on your bed?"

"I will not be an enabler!" she called back.

He ducked his head into her room. "I'm just trying to see if you need any assistance. I told you I was a gentleman."

She pointed at him with a boot in hand. "I've been getting my own shoes on and off by myself since I was a little girl. Not that your offer isn't sweet, but I can see right through it."

He lifted an eyebrow and took a quick visual sweep of the room before leaving her to finish changing into her boots, but he paused when he saw the very elegant, very alluring dress hanging from a hook on the back of her closet door. "Now that's a dress."

She glanced up at it, her nerves ignited yet again. "You like it?"

"Are you in a wedding or something?"

"Oh, no. It's for this black-tie event I agreed to go to next week," she said, her words getting slower and better enunciated as she went.

He stiffened, but did her the favor of attempting to find his calm immediately. "It's for a date."

"Yes," she said succinctly, watching him to gauge his reaction.

"A date with someone else."

"Yes."

"So, you'll be seeing someone else while wearing that dress," he reiterated, his distaste evident.

"It's black tie. And it was on sale, so it just sort of worked out."

"You chose it because it was on sale?" he asked, as if he were trying to trip her up.

"Yes. Why are you looking at me like that?" she demanded.

He shook his head. "No reason. It's nothing."

"Does it look cheap?" she asked.

"What? No. You'll look like a million bucks in that dress."

Her brow furrowed. "You're mad that I accepted the date? You said I should, and I told you I was going to."

He lifted a shoulder. "I know what you said. I thought maybe you changed your mind. Not to mention seeing the outfit you're going to wear makes it way less hypothetical."

She stood up and blocked his view of the dress. "I don't want to talk about the dress, or the date. I want to go out with you, because that's what I spent time dressing for and thinking about all week."

He did his damnedest to shake it off. "I'm sorry. You're right. I just got a mental image of you, in that dress, and I realized I wouldn't get to see you in it. I realize I'm being a jerk."

"You don't like me going out with someone else," she said gently. "That's okay."

He looked hopeful. "It is?"

She nodded. "It makes me kind of happy."

"So happy you'll cancel the date?" he asked hopefully.

She put her hands on his shoulders. "I can't do that. I gave my word. It's just a couple of hours. I'll be home before midnight."

"Did your fairy godmother give you that dress?" he asked.

"No. The event is from seven to eleven-thirty."

"So you'll be coming straight home, alone?"

"Tristan," she warned. "You know I won't be with anyone. If I can resist you, I can resist anyone."

"I'm not sure that makes me feel better. I don't want you to resist me," he said, invading her personal space and grazing the top of her ear with his lips. "I'm sort of hoping your resistance will crumble completely."

"What happened to being a gentleman?" she asked, her voice breathy.

"Even gentlemen have needs."

She lingered close to him for a little longer than was wise. "We should go. Our judgment isn't going to be improved if we're starving."

"I'm hungry all right," he agreed suggestively.

She looked up at him, her blue eyes asking for him to be the stronger one in this instance. "Are you ready to tell me a little bit about what all you've been working through?"

He knew what she was driving at. They'd already shared physical intimacies, but they needed to go past that and trust each other with emotional intimacy as well. That was the hardest part for him—something he'd only done for a short time with Natalie. "I am. Everything about tonight is designed to tell you about my past. The past couple of years in particular."

"So what are we doing?" she asked, still not sure he was ready to reveal that information.

"We are recreating my first night in New York."

She hesitated. "You moved here with Natalie, right?"

He shook his head. "She joined me shortly after I moved. She was still rejecting my proposals heavily when I moved down here after graduating law school. I never had any plans to live in New York. I came here for the same reason I went into probate law."

"Why is that?"

His whole demeanor shifted. "For my grandfather."

"That sounds like there's a story there."

He smiled at her and her soft prompting. "I'll start as we head to dinner."

"Your first meal in New York," she pointed out.

He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. "As a resident, that's correct."

"Comfort food?" she asked.

He smirked at the assumption. "Definitely."

"Something that's around five years later, so I'm guessing something iconic."

"Again, correct."

"Gray's Papaya?" she guessed.

He shook his head. "I'm more of a pizza guy."

She grinned. "Me too. Let's go."

-X-

She wiped her mouth free of pizza sauce and finished off her drink through the straw. "So you got to New York, all alone, on your grandfather's orders, and you had pizza."

"New York's best pizza," he added.

"I stand corrected. Are we going past your first apartment next?" she joked.

"Give me a little credit. I wasn't in the mood to go back to an empty apartment. I had a lot on my mind that night."

"I would imagine so."

"I was trying to sell myself on being here, because my grandfather was so adamant that I start my professional life here."

"You wanted to fall in love with this city. Seems like an easy job. The pizza got you more than halfway there, admit it," she prodded him.

He leaned over the table. "You were hooked right away, weren't you?"

She did a little leaning of her own, matching his posture on the small table and the remnants of their dinner. "I was … ready for this city. I was older than you were when I got here. I wasn't just starting my career. I needed a big change. New York was that for me."

"I think that's what Grandfather wanted for me. When I turned eighteen and moved up to go to Princeton, he told me that if I wanted, I didn't have to go back to my father for anything. I was welcome to get my own place or list his house as my permanent residence, whatever I wanted, but he made sure I knew that becoming an adult meant that I had a choice. My father never did anything that would have revoked his control of me, but short of killing me he couldn't keep me from becoming an adult. One of the wonders of the legal system."

"You always planned on being a lawyer. You love it, that's easy enough to see."

"I did. But I was bound for criminal law, prosecution. I wanted to hit the ground running in Hartford's DA office."

Now she was even more surprised. "You wanted to live in Hartford? I thought you hated it there."

"I hated living in my father's house," he corrected. "I was eighteen. I'd been in military school for two years. I wanted to go to college and have a place to come home to do laundry and recharge, not to mention a real home during summer vacation."

"You lived with your grandfather?"

He lifted four fingers up, tucking his thumb behind his palm. "Four years, on breaks. Once I started at Harvard, I got my own place off campus, but I visited, religiously. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. It made me feel normal. It wasn't until I was accepted officially into law school that he took me out to dinner and explained what he needed."

"From you?"

"He didn't phrase it that way. He didn't make demands. He needed something, and he wanted me to be the one to do it for him, but he asked me. If I hadn't agreed, he'd have found someone else."

"What did he need?"

"He wanted to redraft his will. He'd had, God," he rubbed at his temples. "Two heart episodes. That's what they call them. He had one heart attack, and then follow-up scares. He had the heart attack when I was sixteen, and everything after that felt like borrowed time."

"Why did he need to redraft his will?"

"He'd drawn up a will, decades ago. My grandmother had insisted that my father be the primary beneficiary after they both passed away. She had a soft spot for my dad, never able to see any bad in him. She made sure he knew about the will, as well. It was money my dad not only expected, but counted on. My father lived in opulence and made bad decisions, because he knew he could. It sickened my grandfather, but my grandmother wouldn't hear of changing it while she was alive. My father pretty much spat in the face of every hard-earned life lesson that my grandfather attempted to teach him. After my grandmother died, he decided to do it his way."

"He wrote your father out?"

"He did. He decided to honor my grandmother by setting up a trust for Hartford Public school libraries and to otherwise leave his money his great grandchildren; all his other holdings were bequeathed to me."

"How many great-grandchildren does he have?"

"Just one. So far. Asher is the only son of an only son of an only son. He doesn't inherit until he's twenty-one, and my grandfather had high hopes that by then he'd have others to share it with. Along with the proper upbringing to appreciate the funds. He drove that point home pretty hard."

"So, no pressure on you," she joked.

He smirked. "He didn't add contingencies. It was more blind faith on his part, really. And he had me write the damn thing, so I knew what I was agreeing to. I'm not bound to have any more children, but should they show up, there's a little something in it for them, should they survive my rearing."

"Asher seems to be thriving just fine."

His responding smile was genuine. "Thank you."

"Let me guess, your dad is contesting the last will?"

Tristan snorted. "He claimed that since I was the one to draw up the latter will, I coerced my grandfather into the revision, on the grounds of my wanting to gain revenge on my father following my difficult teenage years. He says I took advantage of my grandfather's feeble state following his compounded health issues."

She mused for a second. "Aren't everyone's teenage years difficult?"

"Yes, but most people don't have to spend years in a series of legal proceedings, discussing why they have not taken steps to seek revenge on their father, whom they detest on moral reasons, for all the ways their teen years sucked."

She considered his reality, trying to put herself in the frame of mind he must have been in on his first night in New York. "This must be someplace special we're headed next, some place worthy of that level of contemplation," she said.

"It was. In fact, I've gone back over and over, since then. It's sort of cliché, but there's something about being up high and looking at things from a distance. Helps with perspective. Makes you feel small."

She was ready. "Then let's go."

-X-

They emerged onto the viewing deck of the Empire State Building well past twilight, two of six people on their elevator. It wasn't as crowded as it might have been, but they were far from alone. They walked to the edge and stood shoulder-to-shoulder as they looked out over the brilliant lights of the city. "Why Hartford Public School libraries?" she asked.

He shifted his weight toward her to block her from the wind. "My grandmother went to public school and became a teacher first, then went to get her masters in library sciences. She worked at school libraries until she married my grandfather, and after that she was on the school board and worked for years doing fundraising."

"I'm surprised. You don't meet a lot of public school-educated Hartford socialites."

"She was only a socialite out of necessity, after she married my grandfather. And even then, not in any way you're imagining. I know you hate all that society wife stuff."

"I don't hate it all. I admit, I didn't see much of a point to it all when I was younger, but I learned a few things when I joined the DAR and nearly married the heir to a media empire."

He raised his eyebrows, taking a full beat to look at her with surprise. She got the feeling she could probably give him a gentle push and knock him right over. "Seriously?"

She shifted her own weight, back and forth. "It's not something I talk a lot about. I had some tumultuous experiences, in college, mostly because of that relationship."

"So Greg really isn't the first guy you've considered marrying?" he asked.

"No, he isn't. But the two situations, they weren't similar at all. For one, Greg didn't even propose. He just talked about marriage. Logan, he proposed. Man, did he propose. And he gave me no warning, at all that he was even thinking about marriage, to anyone ever, let alone me in that moment in our lives."

Tristan kept his eyes glued to her. "What did you say?"

"I had to say no," she said, her eyes focused out on the city and her mind touching the past. "I … I thought about saying yes, but, I just had to say no."

"You didn't love him?"

She was struck then, with the faint memory of pain, almost like a fond caress. "I loved him very much. But that doesn't mean we had any business getting married. We wanted very different things. He was moving to California, and I was at the starting gate of my career. I'd finally gotten my degree in journalism and I wanted to find that first job so badly, to get out and make my way. And I knew, if I went to California and married him, no matter how much he protested, in some way I'd be resigning myself to a life that focused more on him than on me."

"Marriage doesn't have to be that way."

She nodded, but she boasted a melancholy smile. "I know. But it would have been. He was a force of nature that way."

"You're a force to be reckoned with as well," Tristan offered.

"I know. Which is why he and I never would have worked out. And that's okay. It completely sucked at the time, but it was definitely for the best."

He nodded with understanding. "I hear that."

She watched him through wind-whipped hair. "There's more to the story that you haven't gotten to you, right? All the stuff you had to work though, what you told me about your dad and your grandfather—not that all that isn't enough, but there's more, isn't there?"

He shoved his hands in his pockets. "Are you too cold up here?"

She pulled more hair from the corner of her mouth and shoved it behind her ear. "You can tell me. I want to know."

He nodded and stared out into the noise of the city below them, just a hum from their height. "We got the whole will the way my grandfather wanted it. It took a while, I debated a few terms heavily with him—I didn't want to be left as much as he put in my name, and a few other things I won't bore you with," he said. "By then I'd set up practice, and as much as I'd had my reservations I liked my job. I spent more and more time working, mostly because by then things with Natalie weren't so good."

She did the mental math. "This was a couple of years ago?"

He confirmed. "Just over. I'd always taken Asher up to visit him, and we would stay at the house. When she and I split, I packed my bags and decided to stay with him for a while, to clear my head and try to figure out if we could work it out or what my next step would be. I wanted to be there, because it was my home, and I knew Asher could be there with me, and he would feel safe there. But when I showed up, it was after dinner, because he'd sent his staff home. Natalie and I, we'd just… we had a fight that became the last straw, and I drove straight to his house when I left our apartment. He must have…," he said, narrowing his eyes in an attempt to quell tears. "He'd fallen, right next to the bed. I found him, alone, and I tried to do CPR, but the doctor told me later there was nothing anyone could have done. It was quick," he said, obviously a phrase he'd repeated time and again.

She wrapped her arms around him and put her head on his shoulder. The wind continued to whip around them, bending around their joined bodies. "I'm so sorry."

He sniffed in a hard breath before he continued. "I called Natalie, the next day, to let her know, and she just showed up. Brought Ash, directed traffic, made calls and generally took care of me while I zoned out and took care of what I had to for him. Got me through the funeral and kept me away from my folks. I didn't ask her for a damn thing, she just did it all. At the time, I thought that meant that she'd changed her mind about us. I came back home with her after that, but we didn't talk about what it all meant. After about a month, she told me that we weren't renewing our lease—that we both needed to look for new apartments, and that she was filing divorce papers, like we'd planned before."

That took a minute to digest. "You hadn't discussed separating again at all?"

"She was trying to let me process his death—I was an emotional zombie. Like you said, at the time, it sucked, but if she hadn't forced the issue, I would have gone along, being miserable, making her miserable, thinking that was just what marriage was. Because it was what our marriage had become, and it was definitely how my parents' marriage worked. They do things because they think they have to keep up appearances, not because they're in love with each other. Natalie and I, we wanted to be in love with each other, because of Asher. And we did love each other on some level for a while, and that's what made it all so gloriously awful."

Her only response came out like an exhale. "Wow."

He hesitated. "And so we got divorced, and I went to work defending my grandfather's will, along with the rest of my cases, and focused on being a good dad to Asher."

"You dated," she said cautiously, more of a question than a statement.

"I went out on a select number of first and second dates that required no emotional involvement."

She smiled sadly. "I guess I can see the appeal for you, given the circumstances."

He took up her hand in his, warming it from the cold air around them. "I put it off, dealing with all that, because it was easier and I didn't have to. I want to do the hard part for you. I want to be the kind of man you deserve."

She breathed out slowly, the warm air tingling over her cool bottom lip. "From where I'm standing, you already are."

He kissed her on top of the Empire State Building, another cliché, but one she was happy to fulfill. "You give me too much credit. Having painful things happen to you doesn't make you a better person. It's how you deal with them that does that. So, I'm coming to terms with stuff. I'm in the final stages of winning my case against my dad. I feel ready to let Asher entertain the idea of my being involved with a woman and trying to explain to him what that means. But I have all these other little loose ends, like the fact that I'm set to inherit my grandfather's property and the general PTSD of having a marriage that should have been good fall to shit on my watch."

"If it makes you feel any better, in all the ways that you and Natalie made sense, you had I make no sense whatsoever."

He stared at her in disbelief. "That doesn't make me feel any better, at all," he admitted.

She shook her head, realizing her need to explain. "On paper, you two are very compatible. You're both lawyers, well educated, you have a lot of shared experiences. You like a lot of the same things, and yet, it didn't last. You and I, however, are from very different backgrounds, different professions, and generally argue about everything. We have so little in common. But we can't seem to stay away from each other."

He couldn't argue, for once. "Staying away from you is proving to be more difficult than I'd anticipated, and I anticipated it being damn near impossible."

"If it helps, I'll be out of the country as of next Sunday, for another ten days."

"Next Sunday? I wanted to see you before you left," he said, obviously displeased by the reminder.

"We can go out Friday if you're free," she offered.

He shook his head. "You're leaving the country, Rory. I wanted to spend the night before you left with you."

"I can't," she said. "Not this time. I could stop by and see you before I go to the airport," she offered.

He blew out a breath, puffing white clouds out into the night. "I hate the idea of you dating other people."

"It was your idea!" she retorted, her defenses rising.

"It wasn't my idea that you'd spend your last night with another guy, in that dress you bought."

"Tristan, relax. It doesn't matter what I wear, or what night it is, nothing will happen with another guy."

"How do you know that?" he demanded.

She could have answered him, assured him that she was already in love with him, but if he wasn't ready to believe her, and then she would continue to wait. His last few years had been an emotional minefield, and he deserved the chance to get himself on even ground again before jumping into another potentially serious relationship. "I told you I can't be intimate with someone, unless I'm committed only to them. I take my commitments seriously, and I don't go back on my word. I promised to be somewhere on Saturday, so if you want to see me next weekend, it will have to be Friday."

"I can't see you Friday. I want to, but I have Asher that night, and I'd be focused on you and not on him. And I want to start doing things, the three of us, but I think we should wait until you get back from Russia to do that. I need that time to get him used to the idea."

That made her undeniably hopeful. "That's probably for the best."

"What about Sunday? I want to see you before you go. It won't be for as long as I'd like, or the nature of what I want to do, but I respect your boundaries."

"I know," she said, wishing he wasn't always quite so respectful. It was killing her, feeling committed and not showing it. She already knew she'd have to let Greg down gently at some point the following Saturday. She wasn't going to accept another date with him, even if Tristan wasn't ready to move forward. She'd fulfill her obligation, and wait it out. It felt like her only course of action. "Sunday it is. So did you go anywhere else on your first night?"

He shook his head. "Mostly just wished I had someone to go home to. Someone that made everything make sense."

He looked at her like she made all the sense in the world, and what little part of her was still on the fence about him and their chances of making things work out in the end fell away. "You deserve that. Then and now."

"Luckily for me, there's a big difference between then and now. Then I thought I had to be with someone, because of circumstances."

"And now?"

He brushed more hair away from her face and held her gaze. "Now I'm willing to overcome circumstances to be with someone."

"Just someone?" she asked lightly.

"The right someone," he said, poking her gently over her heart.

-X-

"Can I have hot chocolate?" The eager question was full of hope, despite the denials he'd received the first five times he'd asked.

Tristan didn't look up from him phone as he scrolled through his messages. "You just ate."

A little hopping, the kind that typically involved a need to visit a restroom, began in earnest. "That was hours ago. I need hot chocolate now."

Tristan frowned at his son before looking at Natalie. She did her best to hide her smirk, obviously not jumping in to help him out. He looked back at his son. "No one needs hot chocolate."

Asher wasn't about to drop the subject with that kernel of wisdom. "You're going to get coffee."

"So?"

"So, you ate when I ate. If you get coffee, why can't I get hot chocolate?"

"I get coffee to help me stay awake to work after taking you and your classmates to the zoo."

"I'm tired from the zoo, too, so, can I get coffee?"

Tristan handed him money, not wanting to continue the battle of wills. "Get hot chocolate. No whipped cream."

"Mom?" Asher asked.

"Just a little whipped cream," she said with a wrinkle of her nose, and the smart little boy didn't need to be told twice. He was at the counter before Tristan could protest.

"Do you know how much sugar he's had already today?" Tristan asked, annoyed at her overruling.

"Kids are supposed to have sugar at the zoo. It gives us adults something to chase after. That's what entertains the animals," she teased.

"You didn't have to chase after them. They're so short, and they fit into all those little crevices and crannies in the faux-nature landscapes."

"Do you need some whipped cream?" she asked, her voice full of empathy.

He lifted his hands and extended his fingers out in front of him, gesturing he was done with the topic. "Let him have the whipped cream. He'll be bouncing off the walls at your place tonight."

"You were right about one thing, you do need coffee."

"I need more than coffee," he muttered, still grumpy.

Natalie took a deep inhale. "Ah. Rory."

"I'm still ranting about the zoo," he corrected.

"Sorry. Continue."

"You have five kids to watch, only one of them is yours, and while I'm used to all his sneaky tricks, I was not pre-warned about the other kids' underhanded behavioral tactics, and while I'm trying not to let any of them fall into the lion's den, this other parent chaperone came up and gave me coffee."

"Is that bad? You just said how good coffee is."

"It is good. I mean, it was a nice gesture. And she kept smiling at me. Then she sort of merged our groups, and she did this whistle thing that stopped them all in their tracks and made them listen. It was kind of amazing, actually."

Natalie narrowed her eyes at him. "How amazing?"

He hesitated, if only slightly. "I was very aware, at one point, that she wanted me to ask her out. We talked about being single parents and commiserated a little bit about all the single parent stuff. You know how it goes, I'm sure."

"If you complained about me to get into this woman's bed, I will pour coffee down your pants," she warned.

He gave her a face of disdain and disapproval. "I didn't ask her out."

"She asked you?"

"She told me she was in the book. The little book we got from the school, with the class list and the contact info."

"Smooth. But you are dating other people, right? That's what you wanted Rory to do."

His back stiffened at the reminder. "I'm not going to ask this woman out. I have no interest in her, past perhaps whistling lessons."

"Then why did you push Rory into dating someone else?" Natalie asked, obviously irritated.

"Why do you care?" he asked, stunned by her fervor.

"I mean, I know you, and I've seen how you look at her. You can't like the idea of her going out with another man."

"I don't, but it's just a date. Worst-case scenario, he tries to kiss her goodnight and she rebuffs him. Preferably with her knee upper-cutting his groin."

"What decade do you live in? Most guys I date are thinking way past the kiss goodnight, five minutes into the date. This is a world of instant gratification."

"Rory isn't like that. If she can resist being physical with me, after we've already," he trailed off suddenly, meeting her expectant stare. He cleared his throat. "You know."

"Oh please. You know what you're doing, that much I will give you, but you are not irresistible to all women when it comes to sex."

"Will you keep your voice down? If only to save Asher a few years of therapy?" he demanded.

"I just think you're insane if you think sending her out on dates isn't going to result in her developing feelings for someone, and those feelings won't result in sex, or at least a little foreplay action."

He worked his jaw in an attempt to keep it from clenching. "She promised."

"God, Tristan, you're pushing her away, don't you see that? And right into the arms of," she said, biting back her words.

His focus zeroed in on her last words. "The arms of whom? Do you know who asked her out?"

Natalie clamped her lips shut. "I … can't say anything."

He rolled his head to one side. "Too late for that."

"I'm not involved," she protested.

"Like hell," he retorted.

"I promised. She mentioned it, accidentally, but she didn't want me to tell you."

"Whom is she seeing?" he asked, growing more agitated.

"Tristan, calm down."

"Tell me."

"I would only entertain the idea if I thought you would be calm and reasonable about it, and not go storming over to her place and making a big scene. You told her to date other people while you think things through. You can't then dictate who she agrees to date in the meantime."

"You of all people should understand why I'm doing this."

She crossed her arms over her chest protectively. "I know why you think you're doing this. I know… I know the last few years were hard on you. I hate that I had a part in hurting you, the timing, it was awful. You know that."

He calmed considerably. "I know."

"But it's just as awful to push someone away from you because you don't want them to see you deal with your issues. That's not fair to either of you. She really wants to be with you, not this other guy. But if you're not available and he is, what is she supposed to do?"

He leaned back against the wide slats of his chair back. "The deed cleared on his house."

"Oh," she said, looking down at her hands. "Have you decided what to do with it?"

He let out a derisive half-chortle. "Rory was in this exact situation before. Greg got a big house in Connecticut, wanted nothing more than to move out of the city and build a life there. She turned him down flat."

"That was not even remotely the same situation, in any way."

He didn't appear convinced. "Now you know her better than I do?"

"I was her legal counsel during her decision-making process with Greg. Not that she's going to confide in me much now, but," she said with a sigh. "Look, Tristan, you can't assume anything here. If you aren't ready to deal with your grandfather's house, let it sit."

He nodded. "The thing is, I keep coming back to one thing. I told her I needed time to deal with my issues and be ready to be in a committed relationship again, but it's more than that."

"What is it?"

"I know what I want. Nothing that happened two years ago changes how I feel about her now. I don't want to just be her boyfriend. If I'm honest, I want what I wanted before. I want to live in Hartford, and I want that house. It's a connection to my grandfather, and I don't want to lose that. But I want her there with me. But the reality is—she probably needs that time, to date someone and sink into things before she gets serious about them. To get used to having a kid around, and all that comes with that. What I'm not ready for is for her to flat-out reject me. It all scares the hell out of me."

Natalie poked him in the shoulder. "You should let her decide what she's ready for. She's been offered both sides of that coin by someone else, and she's yet to take the bait, and I think it's because she doesn't want to be with him. I think she wants to be with you. She seems to want to go wherever you are, but you can't keep putting this kind of block up and not letting her make these decisions."

"What are you talking about, offered both sides?"

Natalie cringed. "Look, I didn't tell you this. I promised her I wouldn't. But if it helps keep you from making another mistake, you should know. Rory ran into Greg, after she got back from your trip to Paris."

He stilled. "She what?"

"He told her that he was wrong to push her into a big house and a big move and the idea of marriage, when what they had was so good. He wanted to get back together—and it's him she's seeing Saturday. It's just a work thing for him, and she didn't even seem excited to go, if you ask me. She wants to be with you. But if you keep on with this whole idea of bad timing plaguing you, and not letting her in, and I mean all the way in, then it's probably only a matter of time before she takes note of the fact that Greg is willing to let her make the choice and you're not."

He sat there, looking at once deflated and overly informed. "Shit."

"Yes."

He glanced up, oddly calm and thoughtful as their son was making his way back from the register with his drink, after being properly doted on by the crew behind the counter. "Thank you, for telling me."

Natalie eyed her ex warily. "You won't interfere?"

"I won't ruin her date. I promised to respect that."

"Good."

"But I am going to make damn sure she doesn't go on another one, with anyone else but me."

"Finally, you're talking sense. Anything I can do?"

"You've done enough. And I appreciate your meddling. As long as you're done now."

Natalie smiled. "You have a good thirteen more years of me."

Tristan glanced over at Asher, who was approaching them with an upper lip covered in whipped cream and a big smile on his face. "It's worth it."